A few days ago, Microsoft released the long-awaited Windows Phone 7.8 update for all those users who will be stuck on Windows Phone 7 forever because there's no upgrade path to Windows Phone 8 other than buying a new phone. Now that it's here, what, exactly, does WP7.8 to the table?

"A Windows Store app using C++, C#, or Visual Basic, using XAML, is the preferred model for ports from Windows Phone 7. If you are familiar with Silverlight, you can port to a Windows Store app using XAML by using familiar languages like C# or Visual Basic, and a similar set of UI elements and APIs"

Microsoft's pain in this area is purely self inflicted and speaks to a lack of convenience to the developer more than it says anything about platform fragmentation.

Now we have WP7 apps, WP8 apps, Win8 apps, RT apps and end of this year Windows 9 Blue appears which is going to change that story once more. Again! Horrible fragmentation, deprecation and new API turnaround every year.